government could be successfully combined.”  To suppose that such a system would work well there “implied a belief that French Canadians have enjoyed representative institutions for half a century without acquiring any of the characteristics of a free people; that Englishmen renounce every political opinion and feeling when they enter a colony, or that the spirit of Anglo-Saxon freedom is utterly changed and weakened among those who are transplanted across the Atlantic.”

No one who studies carefully the history of responsible government from the appearance of Lord Durham’s report and Lord John Russell’s despatches of 1839 until the coming of Lord Elgin to Canada in 1847, can fail to see that there was always a doubt in the minds of the imperial authorities—­a doubt more than once actually expressed in the instructions to the governors—­whether it was possible to work the new system on the basis of a governor directly responsible to the parent state and at the same time acting under the advice of ministers directly responsible to the colonial parliament.  Lord John Russell had been compelled to recognize the fact that it was not possible to govern Canada by the old methods of administration—­that it was necessary to adopt a new colonial policy which would give a larger measure of political freedom to the people and ensure greater harmony between the executive government and the popular assemblies.  Mr. Poulett Thomson, afterwards Lord Sydenham, was appointed governor-general with the definite objects of completing the union of the Canadas and inaugurating a more liberal system of colonial administration.  As he informed the legislature of Upper Canada immediately after his arrival, in his anxiety to obtain its consent to the union, he had received “Her Majesty’s commands to administer the government of these provinces in accordance with the well understood wishes and interests of the people.”  When the legislature of the united provinces met for the first time, he communicated two despatches in which the colonial secretary stated emphatically that, “Her Majesty had no desire to maintain any system or policy among her North American subjects which opinion condemns,” and that there was “no surer way of gaining the approbation of the Queen than by maintaining the harmony of the executive with the legislative authorities.”  The governor-general was instructed, in order “to maintain the utmost possible harmony,” to call to his councils and to employ in the public service “those persons who, by their position and character, have obtained the general confidence and esteem of the inhabitants of the province.”  He wished it to be generally made known by the governor-general that thereafter certain heads of departments would be called upon “to retire from the public service as often as any sufficient motives of public policy might suggest the expediency of that measure.”  It appears, however, that there was always a reservation in the minds of the colonial secretary and of governors